Quote:
Originally Posted by Barrett
After Googling a bit I found that Cuneo died in 1984, so obviously he had time to finish his WW I work. He seems best known for his history of Rogers' Rangers.
Cuneo, John R., Drawings, Acc. 1987-0025
John R. Cuneo (1907-1984), a lawyer, began Winged Mars with the intent to write a multi-volume history of the air forces of Germany, France, and Great Britain through the end of World War I. The first volume, The German Air Weapon, 1870-1914, was published in 1942 and traced the emergence of German aviation to the outbreak of the war. That volume was followed in 1947 by The Air Weapon, 1914-1916, tracing the functional value of airplanes as weapons during the first two and a half years of the war. Cuneo planned two additional volumes in the series to complete the history of these air forces to the end of 1918, but he abandoned these plans when his publisher, Military Service Publishing Company, canceled the contract.
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I'm not sure that Cuneo intended to complete his series of WW I German aviation books. A busy law practice and other interests seems to have diverted him. I had a brief correspondence with him in the mid-1960s and in one letter he wrote: "Although my studies are thus quite alien to the general material in C&C [
Cross & Cockade Journal], I must confess that I enjoy reading its articles about the 'aces' and lesser 'fry' and regret that I did not do more work and pick up more books on individuals in the '30s when it did not cost a million dollars (or so it seems) to get a book on an air personality as it does today."
He had the time, but (or so it seems) not the inclination. In any case, he lived to see the antiquarian value of his two volumes rise to respectable levels.
Peter
